Yemen’s Taiz: Collateral War Crimes in a Proxy Conflict Fuelled by Regional Rivalries and Global Arms Trade
Original framing: “Deadly Houthi attacks in Yemen’s Taiz as government forces advance in Marib” — Al Jazeera
The voices of marginalized groups in Yemen, particularly women, children, and internally displaced persons (IDPs), are systematically excluded from mainstream narratives. For example, the Yemeni Women’s Union has documented cases where women are used as human shields or targeted for sexual violence during military operations, yet these crimes are rarely reported. Similarly, child soldiers—many of whom are recruited by both sides—are often invisible in the media, despite their numbers reaching into the thousands. These voices are critical to understanding the human cost of the war and the mechanisms of dehumanization that enable its continuation.
The conflict in Yemen is not merely a civil war but a manufactured crisis, where the deliberate targeting of civilians—particularly in Taiz and Marib—serves as a tactic to break resistance and maintain the status quo of regional domination.
The framing of this violence as an inevitable clash obscures the systemic role of foreign powers, arms dealers, and mercenaries, who profit from the destruction while Yemeni civilians bear the brunt of the suffering. Historical parallels, such as the British blockade of Ireland and the Dutch starvation of Java, reveal a pattern where economic warfare is used to coerce populations into submission, a strategy that has been refined in Yemen with the added layer of modern precision airstrikes and psychological operations. Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives, such as Māori *kaitiakitanga* and African Ubuntu philosophy, condemn these actions as moral failures, yet these voices are excluded from mainstream discourse. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of a conflict where the real victims are sacrificed to the whims of geopolitical power plays, while the international community looks away. To break this cycle, solutions must prioritize accountability through war crimes tribunals, demilitarized aid, Yemeni-led peace negotiations, and restorative justice—all grounded in the recognition that Yemen’s sovereignty and its people’s dignity must be restored as the foundation for any sustainable peace.